A review of Hubert Harrison: The Struggle for Equality, 1918-1927, Jeffrey B Perry (Columbia University Press, 2021), £30 Hubert Harrison was a black revolutionary intellectual and sometime innovative Marxist who debated the relations between race and class, socialism and imperialism… Continue Reading
A review of China’s Engine of Environmental Collapse, Richard Smith (Pluto, 2020), £18.99 In 2017, Xi Jinping, China’s president, spoke of developing the country into an “ecological civilisation”. China has signed all the usual international environment and climate agreements and… Continue Reading
International Socialism has, over recent issues, argued that the world is in a grip of a “triple crisis”—expressed through the pandemic, economic disorder and ecological destruction. Across the Atlantic, John Bellamy Foster, the editor of the United States-based Monthly Review,… Continue Reading
A review of Talat Ahmed, Mohandas Gandhi: Experiments in Civil Disobedience, Pluto (2019), £12.99. For readers who know little of India’s history and its “founding father”, Mohandas Gandhi: Experiments in Civil Disobedience is an excellent choice. Talat Ahmed provides a… Continue Reading
A review of Laura Miles, Transgender Resistance: Socialism and the Fight for Trans Liberation, Bookmarks (2020), £10. It is rare indeed to get an extended, detailed account of the challenges that are faced by a highly marginalised social group across… Continue Reading
A review of Gerald Horne, Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music, Monthly Review Press (2019), £22. Jazz has an unfortunate reputation these days.1 It is often seen as “high culture”, something to be respected rather… Continue Reading
A review of Terry Irving, The Fatal Lure of Politics: The Life and Thought of Vere Gordon Childe, Monash University Publishing (2020), £25.99. World-renowned archaeologist, prehistorian and linguist Vere Gordon Childe’s career spanned three decades from 1925 until 1957. He… Continue Reading
A review of Enzo Traverso, Critique of Modern Barbarism: Essays on Fascism, Anti-semitism and the Use of History, IIRE (2019), £17. Can Marxism help us to understand the Holocaust? Marxism is a body of theoretical and experiential understanding that tries… Continue Reading
A review of Brendan McGeever, Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution, Cambridge University Press (2019), £22.99 Brendan McGeever’s meticulously researched book uncovers truly shocking revelations about the scale of antisemitism during the civil war that followed the October 1917 Russian Revolution.1… Continue Reading
A review of Laleh Khalili, Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula, Verso (2020), £20. “Maritime trade, logistics and hydrocarbon transport,” Laleh Khalili argues in this detailed and enjoyable book, “are the clearest distillation of… Continue Reading